Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

I've got my N54L running with just 3 drives in the front bays at the moment but I'm thinking of future expansion. How many extra drives can be run from the motherboard in the server? Obviously the 4 front bays and 1 in the ODD bay, do all the mods to fit more drives require a PCIe card for extra SATA ports?
 
Bit of a dramatic statement

I remember reading a review on the 4TB drives I am migrating to and it showed power usage to be quite a bit higher than the 30W IDLE my Microserver currently does. With it being idle 90% of the time I would rather not incur any extra cost unnecessarily. Not to mention I am convinced I haven't had a drive failure in close on 3 years due to the fact that they aren't constantly spinning.

How do you think the PSU would cope with 6 IDE disks?

I have been running 6 x 2TB drives in my N36L for over 2 years with 0 issues.

I've got my N54L running with just 3 drives in the front bays at the moment but I'm thinking of future expansion. How many extra drives can be run from the motherboard in the server? Obviously the 4 front bays and 1 in the ODD bay, do all the mods to fit more drives require a PCIe card for extra SATA ports?

There are 5 internal ports and 1 eSATA port. You just run an eSATA to SATA cable to the inside of the case and use a molex to 2 sata y splitter and Bob's your aunty.
 
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after a complete nightmare eve trying to setup freenas last night so it would work with my mac ive decided to install whs11 today and have a go at that.

installed easily and i can access the drives etc without any issues. think i will purchase a license now (running on the 30 day trial)

will give it another week and mess around with it some more but it was very easy to set up.
 
I was happy with whs 2011 until I realised I can't even view the pictures stored on it from my wife's android tablet, never mind video. That was one of the main reasons for buying the microserver in the first place but I've been scuppered by silverlight ( and a lack of research).

Time to find a 3rd party app that'll do it.
 
I've just place my order so need a few answers on how to proceed once it arrives.

The main requirements are:

Shares accessible from Windows and Mac devices
FTP Client to download from 'off-site' server
Remote access
Stability

I have access to any MS OS through my works MSDN library so could install MS 2012 Storage Server although that could be overkill?

I've not bought any extra RAM yet so was thinking about an 8GB upgrade, which I need to research.
 
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For FTP their are so many free clients out there, FileZilla for instance.

MS 2012 Storage Server is overkill. Not sure that you'd need anything special. WHS should be fine, so long as you're ok with SMB on the MACs, though there are a couple of tricks to help SMB performance out here (stream support being one of them).
 
For FTP their are so many free clients out there, FileZilla for instance.

MS 2012 Storage Server is overkill. Not sure that you'd need anything special. WHS should be fine, so long as you're ok with SMB on the MACs, though there are a couple of tricks to help SMB performance out here (stream support being one of them).

Thanks for the info :)

The Mac will mainly access share documents. I stram to a Boxee and XBMC Raspberry Pi so they should be OK.

I'll have a better look at WHS.
 
Thanks for the info :)

The Mac will mainly access share documents. I stram to a Boxee and XBMC Raspberry Pi so they should be OK.

I'll have a better look at WHS.

as long as its not used to backup the mac using time machine it works fine.

im using windows server 2011 at the moment after having a nightmare with freenas not working.

you have paragon ntfs or ntfs 3g installed on the mac i assume? this will allow you to write to the NTFS disks (whs standard format)

i was looking to see if whs11 could format in exfat but it doesnt appear to be possible.

remote access is easy enough (ive not setup direct remote access as i need to configure my router (which i cant do remotely at the moment))

i have been using log me in to remote into my mac from work and then RDC to connect to the server (the WHS launchpad doesnt seem to connect)

i currently have 4gb in my server and it hasnt struggled at all yet but you can get 8GB from as little as £40 (purple shirt) once i get crashplan, plex server and ihomeserver up and running it may require more ram.
 
Has anyone tried putting a fan in the front of the case, as well as the one in the back? I like the idea of creating some positive pressure and making sure as much of the air as possible is pulled through the front dust filter rather than through gaps/vents in the chassis.

I'm assuming a full size fan definitely wouldn't fit, but does anyone know if it would be possible to fit something like the Scythe Slip Stream Slim (12mm thick) in behind the front door? I'm also not totally sure if it would be worthwhile with it being such a slim, sleeve bearing fan, but I'm willing to give it a go for £12.

If not, I'll have to take a look at filtering up the back of the case and reversing the exhaust fan (probably with a replacement PWM fan), and seeing if I like that.
 
May I ask how you set up freenas? I spent 2 hours last night doing different things and could not get it so I could copy files from my Mac to my server I set up AFP shares cifs shares. Guest access. All sorts. Nothing seemed to work.

I'll have to check the config when I get home. Off the top of my head guest access or an account with no password won't work on FreeNAS AFP where it is fine on CIFS or whatever the Windows option is called.

I ended up setting up a generic user with a simple password for AFP, same applies to a Time Machine share if you create one.

Time Machine backs up the Mac mini just fine, however the MacBook Pro (which gets more use and has lots more data on it) tends to trigger the corrupt backup warning after 3 weeks or so ... at which point Time Machine wants to delete the backups and start again. I'm alternating the NAS backups with locally attached storage for that machine at the moment as I don't have the time to troubleshoot the issue.
 
Has anyone tried putting a fan in the front of the case, as well as the one in the back? I like the idea of creating some positive pressure and making sure as much of the air as possible is pulled through the front dust filter rather than through gaps/vents in the chassis.

I'm assuming a full size fan definitely wouldn't fit, but does anyone know if it would be possible to fit something like the Scythe Slip Stream Slim (12mm thick) in behind the front door? I'm also not totally sure if it would be worthwhile with it being such a slim, sleeve bearing fan, but I'm willing to give it a go for £12.

If not, I'll have to take a look at filtering up the back of the case and reversing the exhaust fan (probably with a replacement PWM fan), and seeing if I like that.

Are you having temperature issues currently?
 
No, I don't even have the box yet :p

It's not so much a temperature issue, it's more the fact that I hate dust - in my current build I have filtered intakes, filtered exhausts, extensively tested positive pressure and I've even filtered/blocked all of the vents and gaps I can find in the case. Why? Because I REALLY hate dust inside my machines. Plus prevention is better than cure etc.

My PC gets virtually no dust inside it with the above measures, and I'd prefer my microserver to be the same. I just run the vacuum over the (switched off) machine's intakes once a week and give the filters a wash every couple of months. After 5 years I've still never had more than a tiny amount of dust in the case. It keeps temperatures and fan volume low, stops components (especially fans) failing and I just generally prefer it that way.
 
They don't get that dusty inside in my experience. I pulled mine apart after 6 months last week to try XBMC on it for a mate. Some dust on the front panel and the face of the HDD caddys, the internals and mainboard of the machine were dust free.

It's designed as a small business server to sit there and hum away 24x7 for years. HP know what they're doing. ;)
 
I was happy with whs 2011 until I realised I can't even view the pictures stored on it from my wife's android tablet, never mind video. That was one of the main reasons for buying the microserver in the first place but I've been scuppered by silverlight ( and a lack of research).

Time to find a 3rd party app that'll do it.

I watch video streamed from my Microserver running WHS2011 on my android devices.. :confused: Share the folders containing the videos/pictures and use a file explorer on your android devices such as ES File Explorer to browse the shares.
 
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I watch video streamed from my Microserver running WHS2011 on my android devices.. :confused:

Can I ask how?

I'm going in through remote web access, media library > browse videos (or pictures) > select the file I want to view and I get a warning message saying I have to install silverlight 4, which obviously I can't.

I get the same thing on her tablet and my HTC.

I can view them via es file manager but it isn't exactly the last word in media players.

EDIT: Just caught your ninja edit. That's what I'm meaning about finding a 3rd party media app :)
 
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I use BSplayer to actually play the video which is launched when i click on the video in ES. I have used BSPlayer to browse my video shares too.
 
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